


Ravens

by RakshaTheDemon



Category: Frozen (2013), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Exolvo Universe, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2019-03-27 10:48:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13879281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RakshaTheDemon/pseuds/RakshaTheDemon
Summary: Anna is bad at charms. Like, record-setting bad. At least until she starts getting help from a very unlikely source.Originally posted on tumblr.





	Ravens

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally a prompt from Searlait on tumblr, using the words "Raven, Origami, Epistle."

Charms was not Anna’s best class.  It wasn’t even her  _second_ best.  Or third.  In fact, next to Potions it was her worst subject.  It didn’t seem to matter how hard she studied or how much time she spent perfecting her wand movements; her results always ranged between “disappointing” and “non-existent.”

The constant failure wasn’t too bad, in and of itself.  Anna was great at plenty of other things, so being abnormally bad with charms wasn’t really a problem.  She had top marks in Defense Against the Dark Arts, she could fly  _circles_  around anyone in First  _or_  Second Year, and somehow she’d managed to get a good handle on Transfiguration, even though everyone said it was supposed to be more difficult than Charms. For Anna to be at least halfway-decent with the one subject, while barely scraping through the other, was a conundrum that confused everyone.  Rumor was a few Ravenclaws had even taken to studying the situation.

What made things even more confusing, and what made Anna’s inability to succeed at Charms difficult to accept, was that Elsa  _excelled_  at it.  She’d never told Anna this herself, of course.  Nor had Anna ever actually  _seen_  Elsa performing a charm.  Or any other spell, for that matter.  But everyone else in the school seemed to know about Elsa’s propensity for the subject.  On Anna’s first day of Charms class Professor Flitwick had been beside himself with excitement at the prospect of having a  _second_  Arendelle child to teach.  Of course, that excitement died shorty after the lesson actually began, and Anna’s attempt at levitating a feather instead resulted in the feather somehow becoming heavy enough to break the desk.

At first her classmates had suggested the seemingly obvious solution.  "If your sister is so great at this stuff, just ask her for help.“  Right.  Ask  _Elsa_  for help.  The person who hadn’t said more than perhaps three full sentences to Anna in the past  _six years_.  Elsa, the person who wouldn’t even make  _eye contact_  with Anna when they would happen to pass each other in the hallway.  Elsa, who would rather leave the Great Hall with half her breakfast uneaten than let Anna come over to say "hello”.  She was supposed to ask  _Elsa_  for help.

How would she even  _do_  that?  The only time Elsa even stayed in the same  _room_  as Anna was during meals in the Great Hall.  If Anna walked into the library Elsa would leave.  If Elsa was talking to a professor between classes and Anna showed up to do the same, Elsa would leave.  If Elsa was on the Quidditch pitch and Anna stood  _waaaaay_  on the other side,  _Elsa would leave._ Presumably, anyhow–she’d never actually tested that last one.  But it was  _probably_  true, and it was  _definitely_  true that asking Elsa for help was basically impossible.

She tried going to other for help instead.  She started with anyone in Gryffindor who was at least  _decent_  with charms, which meant pretty much everyone in her house.  She even got Hermione Granger to tutor her for awhile, but the improvements were minuscule.  Next she turned to the Ravenclaws.  Half the house jumped at the opportunity, though many of them seemed more interested in determining just how Anna was managing to screw up so badly.  One tutoring session had somehow morphed into a three-hour heated debate about whether Anna’s failed softening charm (which turned everything she used it on into a goopy liquid) suggested a fundamental error in the understanding of certain wandwork principles.

Anna stopped asking the Ravenclaws for help after that.

The Hufflepuffs, of course, had been happy to try and help.  But they didn’t fair any better than the Gryffindors or Ravenclaws.  As far as basically every single person at Hogwarts was concerned, Anna was a lost cause.

That left only the Slytherins, and there was only one person in  _that_  house whom Anna would even  _want_ helping her.  And since Elsa had made it abundantly clear that she wanted nothing to do with Anna, that option was gone as well.  

Anna simply wasn’t meant to be good at charms.  It was a fact that she resigned herself to, albeit grudgingly.  She would still try her hardest to get better, but everyone could tell it just wasn’t going to happen.

And then the ravens started.

At least, Anna thought of them as ravens.  It was difficult to pinpoint the  _precise_  species of bird they were meant to be, seeing as they were made out of parchment.  But they were definitely birds, and since they all seemed to contain words of wisdom, she decided they must have been ravens.  

They would show up at random.  Flitting across the Great Hall.  Smacking into the back of her head while she dangled her feet in the lake.  Sitting on portraits in the halls and waiting for Anna to pass by.  

And each one, when she managed to get hold of it and unfold the parchment, contained a  letter (one of the Ravenclaws working on the newly-dubbed Anna Theorem had dubbed it an  _“epistle”_ , but “letter” suited Anna just fine).  They were all focused on charm work.  More precisely, they were focused on  _Anna’s_  charm work.  And they did so in a way that Anna  _understood_ , more intuitively than she’d understood anything her various tutors had tried.

“Think of your wand as a sword,” one of the origami-raven-missives had said.  "When you cut with a sword, you don’t just slash wildly.  You direct your movements deliberately, so that everything, from blade to tip, goes precisely where you need it to.“

After the first raven Anna’s skill in charms was, if not improving, then at least  _changing_.  After the ninth, she was doing markedly better.  And by the twenty-fifth she was not only passing, but excelling.  

Nobody else could quite see how the raven-letters had made such a difference.  Not a single one was signed or marked in any way that might indicate the sender, leaving the whole thing a mystery.

But Anna didn’t need a signature to know who had sent them.  No one else could possibly understand her so clearly.

And one day, after months of practice, she made an origami raven of her own that flew across the Great Hall to land in front of a certain Slytherin girl.

When opened, it contained only four words.

_"I love you too.”_


End file.
